In wireless one-hop broadcast communications, each node broadcasts packets to inform all neighbors within an intended communication range of its existence. However, the packets from different nodes may interfere with one another due to the overlapping communication ranges. As such, establishing reliable one-hop broadcasting or multicasting in wireless networks is non-trivial.
A conventional attempt at achieving reliable broadcast is shown by a network 10 in FIG. 1 comprising a coordinator 11 and multiple stations 12. The coordinator 11 emulates reliable broadcast by transmitting multiple unicast packets to the multiple stations 12. Each station acknowledges a corresponding unicast. However, there is long latency before each packet can be delivered to each station reliably. The latency is proportional to the number of stations in the network or the number of unicast packets. Further, when a few stations have good channel access to the coordinator, then transmitting broadcast packets multiple times leads to bandwidth waste. There is, therefore, a need for a method and system for broadcast or multicast communication in wireless networks that addresses the above shortcomings.